September once again brings the start of a new school year, and with it, a new debate season. The 2012-13 season was a great success, as students who began with us as 6th graders competed in their final year of middle school debate.   This year’s going to be a bit different.   With about 3 quarters of the kids in 6th or 7th grade, our squad this year is very talented, but young.  And while it’s always fun to have a squad full of heavyweights, the work that will turn the novices into those heavyweights is equally, if differently, rewarding.  So how’s the team doing so far?  Let’s take a look:

September 

The end of September saw Kudos send a small group of competitors to Long Beach, where they participated in The Jack Howe Invitational.  We don’t have a ton of pictures, but we do have a couple.

Celena and Kaylynn broke to octafinals in varsity PF.

Celena and Kaylynn diligently prepare for battle.

But it wasn’t just our high schoolers who did well against the tough competition.  Kelly, 7th grade, and Cecily, 8th, also broke to octafinals in public forum debate.  Here we see them getting a trophy IOU.  (The tournament had accidentally ordered the wrong trophies.  They mailed the correct ones to us a week or two later.)

Kelly and Cecil trophy at Jack Howe!

Michelle and Amy also broke at Long Beach in their very first tournament.

October

Just a week later, Gabriellino High School in San Gabriel held the first middle school only invitational of the year.  It provided a great opportunity for some of our new kids to get their feet wet, while our most experienced debaters battled it out for hardware.

Bryan and Vincent compete in their first debate tournament.

First competition rounds for Phoebe and Scarlet too!

Catherine, an experienced debater, was partnered with 1st timer William.  The two battled it out and finished with a winning record.

Catherine and William do some pre-round prep.

In the end, our most experienced debaters saw to it that we wouldn’t leave empty handed.  Against a large field and some very tough competition, Kelly and Cecily were again able to bring home the goods.  Fortunately, Freeman was there to document the moment with yet another fantastic photograph:

Two Kudos students competed at the Oxford Debate Invitational on the weekend of October 19th.  Jon Lee, competing for Oxford, earned top speaker in novice LD.  Meanwhile, Edison, competing for Kudos, went 6-0 in prelims in varsity LD, earned the top seed, won top speaker, and finished 2nd after losing a split decision in a very close final round.

Next up was our first middle school league speech tournament, held at Jefferson on the evening of the 24th.  Strangely, the photography improved dramatically beginning at this tournament.

The Kudos family is in the house.

Courtney, Caty, Miranda, and Vicky

Ivan attends his first tournament!

Catherine performs her storytelling speech.

Huge fields made this an extremely difficult tournament for every competitor, and lots of very strong students walked away empty handed.  Fortunately, Kudos found triumph in expository, as both Caty and Melanie brought home the hardware:

Melanie and family are happy as she trophies in her first tournament.

Caty’s smiling, but she’s actually mad she didn’t get first. That’s called being a beast.

Finally, on the weekend of the 26th, Kudos took a small squad to The Schurr Classic, a high school invitational.  Saturday featured competition in speech events, and Caty once again brought home hardware with her expos speech:

The good news is that we hired Freeman to coach debate, not take pictures.

On Sunday, a few of our PF teams competed in debate, while several of our PF and LD students competed for their schools.  This meant that our kids ended up debating each other several times.  Celena was paired with Kelly for this one, and they made quarterfinals.

Kelly adjusts to her role as first speaker.

Sharne and Nora, competing for Arcadia, battle our brave 6th graders, Anjee and Joshua, at Schurr.

Audrey, meanwhile, made it to semifinals, but was walked over on coach’s decision, as her opponent in semis was one of her San Marino teammates.

Emerson, in his first LD tournament, draws Audrey as his competition in the second round.

Whew.  That took a while.  At any rate, it’s been a very busy first couple of months.  Our new kids are already showing so much improvement, and we’re really excited to see them continue to grow as the competition seasons continues.

Complete Winners List for September/October:

*High school student competing under the name of his/her high school.

All of us here at Kudos were so excited to learn recently that the Pasadena Star News reported on our Policy Debate national champions, Jerry and

Kirk.  We’re so proud to see our students and program featured in the flagship news source for the San Gabriel Valley.

Click here to read the entire http://printrestaurant.com/online/ story.

June:  A full year of work completed, leaving just one last task.  A trip out of state, to compete against 95 schools from 29 states and 3 countries; a challenge unlike any other; an epic battle from which only the strongest and most prepared can possibly hope to emerge victorious; an event called:

The 2013 NJFL National Tournament!

This year’s competition was held in Birmingham Alabama and was, without any exaggeration, the most difficult middle school tournament in history.  Large fields and brutal breaks meant a lot of very good entries would fail to advance.  In such a cutthroat environment, how would our Kudosians fare?

The team gathers in the lobby of the tournament on Saturday morning for one last photo shoot before a day of travel back to Los Angeles.

But let’s rewind.  Four days prior, our warriors packed their tubs and business formal clothes, and boarded a plane to Alabama.

The mood was high. We were all excited to put our training to the test. Yet an underlying seriousness of purpose lay just beneath the jovial banter.

Wheeler and Kirk just figure they’ll wait till the crowd clears at the baggage claim in Alabama. Strauss, Tyson, Victor, and Alex are less patient.

We checked into the hotel and, after a long day of travel, everyone was happy to enjoy a delicious meal.

A hearty dinner the night before battle ensures vigor in the morning.

Before we knew it, the day of reckoning had arrived.  The students had assembled and were ready to fill the vans and head to the site.

Adrenaline pumps before the first day of competition.

Until… Car Trouble!  One of the vans wouldn’t start!  Yes, many nerves were frayed Wednesday morning as the coaches scrambled to transport all the competitors in just one van.  Two trips were made and, in the end, everyone made it rounds on time.  Whew!

Justin, Angela, Caty, Mei, and Jack make adjustments between rounds.

But even as dedicated a group as this found some time for frivolity:

Not prepping… what’s this?  Middle-schoolers on their phones?  Shocking!

Spin your partner round and round.

Yes, apparently, Kelly and Jonathon found time to enter a square dancing contest while at the tournament.

Hold the phone everybody: breaking news on proposed peace talks with the Taliban!  How will this impact the negotiated peace alternative we’re presenting on neg?!

After two long days of furious competition, prelims and early breaks rounds were finished.

Friday brought final rounds and awards.

First up were OO finals.  Stanley Yu and Melinda Guo both made the cut to the top 6.

Stanley and his dad discuss Stanley’s final round performance with Wheeler.

Of course, there was still the Policy finals to come, featuring Jerry and Kirk.  Um…  Tragically, we actually don’t have any pictures from that round.  But that’s OK, because we have plenty of pictures of them at awards.

And speaking of awards, all the battles were fought, and the winners chosen, and it was time to gather in the theater.

A full house assembles to see…

…who will get these.

In policy debate, Joey and Natalie earned awards as quarterfinalists, pictured below.  Who knows how much further they could have gone, if poor bracket luck hadn’t reared its head.

In quarters, Joey and Natalie  ended up hitting Jerry and Kirk.  Teammates don’t debate against one another, so the higher seed – Jerry and Kirk – walked over the lower seed – Joey and Melinda.  It’s standard procedure, but a really tough way to get knocked out, as it doesn’t entail actually losing an outround.

Joey and Natalie are awarded for  their quarterfinals berth.

Also, Jerry and Kirk each won an award for finishing among the top ten speakers in policy.

Of course they had to come back to pick up those national champion trophies as well.

Congratulations, Kirk and Jerry, on your first place finish. You guys really deserved this.

All told, 18 different Kudos students earned a total of 25 awards (counting a team award, policy for example, as a single award).

Jenny: OO and Public Forum      Jack: Public Forum

Jax: Congress and Public Forum        Justin: Extemp and Public Forum

Victor Q: LD and Congress     Victor L: Public Forum

Audrey: Extemp                                          Caty: Public Forum

Angela: Extemp and Public Forum    N’Angela: Public Forum    Nora: Public Forum

Stanley: OO     Melinda: OO, HI, and Declamation     Alex: Congress and Public Forum

Thanks to all this student achievement, Wheeler got to get up on stage too, to receive two prestigious School of Excellence awards.

So anyhow, after everything was over, we had a last group pose with all the hardware:

Almost everyone is included in this picture.  Jax and Nora had already left.

Here is our complete results list:

School Awards:

Debate School of Excellence 2013 – Awarded to the top 6 of 93 schools in debate.

Overall School of Excellence 2013 – Awarded to the top 3 of 93 schools overall.

Individual/Team Awards:

Jerry Wang and Kirk Wu:  National Champions – Policy Debate

Kirk Wu:  Quarterfinalist – Extemp

Jerry Wang:  Quarterfinalist – OO

Stanley Yu:  4th Place – OO

Melinda Guo:  6th Place – OO

Melinda Guo:   Semifinalist – HI

Melinda Guo:   Semifinalist – Declamation

Jenny Li and Jack Li:  Double Octafinalist – Public Forum

Jenny Li:  Quarterfinalist – OO

Jax Rounds and Alex Zhao:  Quarterfinalist – Public Forum

Jax Rounds:  Finalist – Congress

Alex Zhao:  Finalist – Congress

Victor Qin:  Partial doubles (top 24) – LD

Victor Qin:  Finalist – Congress

Caty Szeto and Victor Luo:  Double Octas – Public Forum

Angela Chen and Justin Chuang:  Double Octas – Public Forum

Angela Chen:  Quarterfinalist – Extemp

Justin Chuang:  Semifinalist – Extemp

Joey Kiang and Natalie Wang:  Quarterfinalist – Policy

Joey Kiang: Quarterfinalist – Extemp

N’Angela Chen and Nora Sharp:  Octafinalist – Public Forum

Audrey Lam:  Quarterfinalist – Extemp

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Mission accomplished, it was time to fly home:

Bye, Alabama. Thanks for the memories. See you in 4 years.

May is not only the month of spring flowers and Mother’s Day, it also represents the end of the regular season for competitive speech and debate.  Yes, May brought the last of the league tournaments, and a chance to close out an extremely successful year with a flourish.  As usual, our young warriors didn’t disappoint!

First up, was the 4th league speech tournament, held at Jefferson Middle School.

Caty competes in round.

Kudos fielded a very small squad for this meet, as most of our kids skipped this tournament to focus on preparation for nationals.

Here we see Kelly, Caty, and Jessica enjoying themselves at awards:

Kelly, Jessica, and Caty: a happy trio!

Despite our small team, Jessica Lin made sure Kudos didn’t go home empty handed, finishing prelims as the top seed, and ultimately taking the 6th place trophy in Sight Reading despite a very large  field.

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Next up was the exciting Spring Elementary Invitational at St. Rita’s school, an opportunity for our younger competitors to get in on the action.  This was the first elementary tournament to feature Public Forum debate, and our debaters acquitted themselves admirably, winning the top three spots, and suggesting a promising long term future for our middle school tournament squad.

Here we see Anjee (left) and Joshua (right) in round one at the St. Rita’s tournament.

Anjee and Joshua finished 2nd overall in the tournament.  It took a strong performance in the first round (pictured above and below) against another very talented duo in Miranda and Alvina to get them through to the end.

Miranda and Alvina battle against Anjee and Joshua in an epic round of elementary PF.

You can watch the entire round if you like, here:

Aff constructive – Anjee

Neg constructive – Miranda

Crossfire between Anjee and Miranda

Aff rebuttal – Joshua

Neg rebuttal – Alvina

Crossfire 2 + Aff and Neg Summary + Grand Cross

Aff and Neg final focus + judges critique

Kudos students also did a fantastic job in SPAR debate, capturing 5 of 6 awards in the event, and in impromptu speaking, where we also captured 5 of 6 trophies, including the championship!

From right to left, Eric Dong, Meghan Wong, Hannah Li, Eric Gao, and William Chang celebrate!

Our complete list of winners from the St. Rita’s Invitational follows:

Public Forum Debate:

Jacob and Thomas Chon – 1st place

Anjee Feng and Joshua Zhang – 2nd place

Courtney Chan and Aileen Wan – 3rd place

Impromptu Speaking:

William Chang – 1st place

Eric Gao – 2nd place (tied)

Hannah Li – 3rd place

Meghan Wong – 4th place

Eric Dong – 5th place

SPAR Debate:

Austin Wong – 2nd place

Emma Chen – 3rd place

Vicky Tong – 4th place

Rachel Ker – 5th place

Storytelling:

Eric Miao – 1st place

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The very last tournament of the regular season took place on May 25th, when the 4th league debate tournament was held at Chandler School in Pasadena.  We went in hoping to finish the year with another dominant performance, and our middle school debaters definitely did not disappoint.

Kudos debaters emerge victorious against tough opponents in the highly competitive SCJFL.

In Policy Debate, Kudos students took home all of the trophies, including top speaker:

Raymond, Victor, Benjamin, Jonathon, and Sally all show off their hardware. Eric Choi (not pictured) also trophied in this event.

We also had good success in Public Forum Debate.  Unfortunately, this tournament ran long and the final round of PF had to be cancelled, which meant that the final order had to be determined on speaker points.  Kudos had one of three undefeated teams left, at that point, but was relegated to third on points, despite not having lost a round.

Kudos teams take four of the eight trophy winning places in PF, and 3 of 6 speaker awards.

In Lincoln Douglass debate, our competitors did even better, taking 5 of the 6 trophies, including 1st place, and also claiming the top two speaker awards in the event.

Jerry wins LD at Chandler!

The complete list of winners from Chandler follows:

Policy Debate:

Jonathon Liu and Sally Kang – 1st place

Victor Luo and Benjamin Yeh – 2nd place

Raymond Cu and Eric Choi – 3rd place

Jonathon Liu – Top Speaker

Lincoln Douglass Debate:

Jerry Wang – 1st Place

Stanley Yu – 3rd place

Alex Zhao – 4th place

Audrey Lam – 5th place

Brian Chang – 6th place

Jerry Wang – Top Speaker

Stanley Yu – Second Speaker

Public Forum Debate:

Kirk Wu and Jax Rounds – 3rd place

Joseph Kiang and Natalie Wang – 4th place

Kelly Wong and Caty Szeto – 7th place

Cicily Deng and Mei Johnson – 8th place

Lauren Song – Second Speaker of 70

Caty Szeto – Fourth Speaker of 70

Joseph Kiang – Sixth Speaker of 70